Thursday, February 12, 2015

I love a good competition. Or even a bad one. Spelling bees,
backyard bocce ball matches, staring contests. I’m competitive with other
people and competitive with myself, competitive but not cutthroat, competitive because
the alternative feels too much like treading water when I’d rather swim.

Here’s a healthy competition
we’re all eligible for. (And, by “all,” I mean anyone able to follow along
with these letters and words. I don’t want to see any self-righteous, “Well,
you know, not all of us are eligible.
Not everyone in this world knows how to read - just the lucky ones….” notes in
my inbox.) A new literary journal, Easy Street, is holding a sentence
contest. Have you ever written, spoken, or thought of a specific set of words,
about an idea, that kind of impressed you? About 7 years ago, I took somewhat
of a shine to a sentence, a question really, I wrote in my journal:

What’s more deflating
than ultimately having no choice but to conclude that someone you’d initially deemed
very special is actually no different from pretty much everybody else?

I wowed only myself with this one. Of the 11 or so people I
repeated it to, 10 mutely projected, “Is this about me?” looks. One straight-up
rolled his eyes.